Schiavo death 'humane,' Cape coma survivor says

As the world watches Terri Schiavo slip away, a Cape Girardeau woman is observing with a sense of empathy few others share.

Gloria Mecham was once on life support. Her husband made the difficult decision to remove her from it because doctors treating her predicted she would not survive.

"It was the humane thing for him to do," Mecham said.

She believes it's also time to let Terri Schiavo go.

In January 1972, Mecham was critically injured in Dexter, Mo., when a train hit her car and dragged it over a third of a mile. She was in a coma for three months, she said.

Mecham said her then-husband -- they have since divorced -- talked with the doctors, his family, and her family and while no one liked the decision, they all agreed it had to be made. Unlike the Schiavo family, where bitterness has characterized family relations, there was a surprise. Within the same day, Mecham came out of her coma and sat up in the hospital bed. She said she was hungry, but that's all she knew.

"I did not know who I was," Mecham said.

Mecham said that she can understand it's natural for Schiavo's parents to hold on to every last hope. But even if Schiavo were to be reattached to her feeding tube, Mecham said she believes it is cruel to expect her ever to be the daughter they remember and want to recapture.

"Her brain has not been nourished," Mecham said. "They have kept her body alive, but her brain has not been working. The person is gone. Her body is disintegrating."

Schiavo has been on life support too long, Mecham said. Her brain can no longer signal her limbs to move or her organs to function. Even if she were to regain consciousness, she said, Schiavo's brain could not withstand catching up with 15 years of lost time, learning who to trust, learning who she is.

Mecham was comatose for only three months, she said, and she still suffers the effects. Even after she regained consciousness, she said doctors predicted she would live only months.

When Mecham woke up from her coma, she said she had no memory of her life from age 5 to 29. It took 10 years to regain that. Although she said she and her husband had a happy marriage before the accident, she did not recognize him when she awoke, and didn't particularly like him at first. Mecham regained her memory, but still has trouble with short-term memory.

"All these years I have lived with this," she said. "I can't remember yesterday. I have to write things, make notes for myself, rely on people to remind me."

As the years passed, Mecham remarried and raised her two children by her first husband. Slowly over the years, she could feel the "cloud in her brain" breaking up and letting her life come back in. Schiavo, she said, has no chance of that because too much time has passed and her brain cannot function.

Mecham said she does not blame Schiavo's husband that he wants to let her go. She disagrees with those who vilify him.

"That man should not be condemned," she said. "He did not kill her. He let her go. He obviously loved her."

To keep Schiavo alive, Mecham believes, is to hold on to false hope.

Mecham said she believes that Schiavo's family should find comfort in knowing that death is not to be feared. She said when she was near death, she crossed over to another realm that she said is "absolutely breathtaking. It's indescribable. She is in a beautiful place. This woman has already walked that walk. She is probably in her soul wanting them to let her go."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

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